The MSM has clearly adopted the storyline that President Bush is only appointing yes men/women to his cabinet. They say he shuts people out who disagree. They always bring up Gen. Shinseki as proof of their story line. He was, they say, fired for having a dissenting opinion. John Kerry ran around the country saying Bush/Rumsfeld got rid of him becaise he disagreed with them.
Washington Times, Inside the Ring, By Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough
Gen. Shinseki was challenged by higher-ups about his estimate. And he and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not see eye to eye on Army transformation. But Gen. Shinseki, a decorated Vietnam War combatant, was not forced out by Mr. Bush or anyone else. He served his full four-year term before retiring as scheduled in August 2003 after 37 years in the Army.
It’s just not true that he was fired for having a different opinion, but it fits the script.
New York Times: New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies
November 17, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, – Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central
Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to “support the administration
and its policies in our work,” a copy of an internal memorandum shows.
Discouraging dissenting views. Get with the program or get out. You get the picture. It fits the script.
The memo also said,
“We do not make policy, though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political involvement, especially political partisanship.”
So the page one, above the fold story in the Times didn’t have room for this part of the memo. For such an important story, you would think they would have read the whole thing.
The White House press briefing had several questions about today’s ‘front page’ story.
Q. Why shouldn’t people, though, see this as an effort to tell people at the
CIA, if you disagree, keep your mouth shut?MR. McCLELLAN: That’s not at all what he was saying. And if you look at
the email, he said what the direction from the President was to him when he took
over as the Director of Central Intelligence. He said the President’s direction
was very clear: the intelligence community must do all it can to keep Americans
safe, both here and abroad. And we appreciate all the work that the men and
women of the CIA are doing. He also went in to say in that email that: “We do
not make policy, though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political
involvement, especially political partisanship.” So you have to look at the
entire email. It’s exactly what he said.
This is one reason why the NY Times is so powerful, and dangerous. They used to be able to drive coverage in any direction they wanted. Thank heaven for the blogs. The blogs have changed the way the game is being played. It is no longer a monopoly. It is no longer a quick and easy trip from the Times front page to national syndication around the country to the evening news. Today, a story has to go through a mine field of blogs who get great satisfaction from highlighting their bias. This story is just another screaming headline hiding a thin, predictable storyline.
With the resignation of William Safire on the editorial page of the New York Times, that leaves David Brooks as the only conservative writing for the paper. He joins the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby as the lone conservatives writing for the editorial pages of these once respected papers.
In the immortal words of John Kerry, ‘Can I get me some affirmative action here?’
Safire to Retire from ‘NYT’ Op-Ed Column
NEW YORK William Safire, the conservative voice on the New York Times Op-Ed
page for more than three decades, will end his regular column in early 2005, a
Times spokeswoman said Monday.”He’s written it for a long time and has been
talking to [Times Publisher] Arthur [Sulzberger Jr.] about this for a year and a
half,” said spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. “His last column will be Jan.
24.”
Saddam’s Oil for Food Scam Twice As Big As Previously Thought
NEW YORK â?? Saddam Hussein’s regime made more than $21.3 billion
in illegal revenue by subverting the U.N. Oil-for-Food program (search) through surcharges, kickbacks and smuggling oil â?? more than double previous estimates, according to congressional investigators.
Washington Post
Oil-for-Food Official May Have Blocked Inquiries
Head of U.N. Program in Iraq Accused of Improperly Accepting Purchasing Rights
UNITED NATIONS — Benon Sevan, the official accused of improperly receiving
lucrative rights to purchase oil from Saddam Hussein’s government while he was
running the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, discouraged his staff from
probing allegations of corruption and helped block efforts by the U.N.
anti-corruption unit to assess where the program was vulnerable to abuse,
according to senior U.N. officials.
and for more background, here is a killer article by the reporter leading the charge on this story, Claudia Rosett of the Wall Street Journal.
The Oil-for-Food Scam: What Did Kofi Annan Know, and When Did He Know It?
The UN, in the name of its own lofty principles, and to its rich emolument,
actively helped sustain and protect a tyrant whose brutality and repression were
the cause of Iraqi deprivation in the first place. What can this mean? The
answer may be simply that, along with its secrecy, its massed cadres of
bureaucrats beholden to the favor of the man at the top, its almost complete
lack of accountability, external oversight, or the most elementary checks and
balances, the UN suffers from an endemic affinity with anti-Western despots, and
will turn a blind eye to the devil himself in order to keep them in power.
Certainly there is much in its history and its behavior to support this view.Perhaps, then, the complicity was there all along, built in, and was
merely reinforced year after year as the UN collected the commissions and
processed the funds that transformed Oil-for-Food into the sleaziest program
ever to fly the UN flag and the single largest item on every budget of all nine
UN agencies involved, plus the Secretariat itself. That, in the end, may be the
dirty secret at the center of the Oil-for-Food scandal.
The indespensible Charles Krauthammer on Arafat’s Legacy,
It is a legacy in two parts: means and ends. The means? Violence. Arafat
invented modern terrorism: airplane hijackings, kidnappings, and the spectacular
mass murder, like the Olympic massacre of 1972. Others had tried it. Arafat
perfected it. He turned terror into a brilliantly successful political
instrument, a vehicle to international recognition and respect. The man who
murdered more innocent Jews than anyone since Hitler died an international hero.
The president of France bowed to his casket. The secretary-general ordered UN
flags to fly at half-staff.Arafat also bequeathed a legacy of ends: uncompromising irridentist ends.
He didn’t just reject any settlement that would leave Israel intact, thereby
setting a precedent that any successor dare not violate. He also raised a new
generation to ensure that rejection. Deploying every instrument of propaganda —
television, radio, newspapers and, most importantly, schools and summer camps
for children — his Palestinian Authority fed his people a diet of such virulent
anti-Semitism and denial of the Jewish connection with the land that no
successor will even be in position to contemplate breaking Arafat’s rejectionist
precedent.
The great Michael Barone tells us how the blogs ran circles around the mainstream media,
It was a bad election for Old Media. More than in any other election in the
last half-century, Old Media — The New York Times and CBS News, joined often
but not always by The Washington Post, other major newspapers, ABC News and NBC News — was an active protagonist in this election, working hard to prevent the
re-election of George W. Bush and doing what it could for John Kerry. The
problem for Old Media is that it no longer has the kind of monopoly control over
political news that it enjoyed a quarter-century ago. And its efforts to help
John Kerry proved counterproductive.
Jimmy Carter is beyond pathetic at this point. He has a clueless stance on human rights. His record demonstrates that he is a champion of human rights abusers, not human rights. The thing that really rubs me wrong is his pretentiousness.
On Thursday Carter called Yasser Arafat “a powerful human symbol and forceful advocate” who united Palestinians in their pursuit of a homeland.
“Yasser Arafat’s death marks the end of an era and will no doubt be
painfully felt by Palestinians throughout the Middle East and elsewhere in the
world,” Carter said. “He was the father of the modern Palestinian nationalist
movement. A powerful human symbol and forceful advocate, Palestinians united
behind him in their pursuit of a homeland. Arafat provided “indispensable
leadership to a revolutionary movement” and played a key role in forging a peace
agreement with Israel in 1993, he was excluded from negotiations in recent
years.“My hope is that an emerging Palestinian leadership can benefit from
Arafat’s experiences, be welcomed to the peace process by (Israeli) Prime
Minister (Ariel) Sharon and (US) President (George W.) Bush, and be successful
in helping to forge a Palestinian state living in harmony with their Israeli
neighbors,” Carter said.
Today, writing in the New York Times, Carter says
For more than 40 years, Yasir Arafat was the undisputed leader of the
fragmented and widely dispersed Palestinian community and the symbol of its
cause. His pre-eminent role was not perpetuated by his boldness or clarity of
purpose, but was protected from challenge by his status as the only common
denominator around which the disparate factions could find a rallying point.
What a pitiful old fool Jimmy Carter has become.
Both Carter and Arafat are Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
This love affair has been going on for a while…
Carter’s Delusions About Arafat
A former U.S. president continues to present Arafat as peaceful and democratic.
Carter concludes that the U.S. can no longer play an even-handed
negotiating role because it is “aligned today with Israel and making demands
that Palestinians will not accept.” Incredibly, Carter suggests that “other
world leaders — perhaps in the Arab world, Europe or the United Nations” should
get involved in negotiations. Does Carter expect a fair deal out of a
historically anti-Israel coalition?
Arafat’s Dead, good riddance. Interetsed in his legacy, click here.
How many of us have watched countless hours of World War II battles on the History Channel? With the passage of time, the loss of life in defense of our country becomes acceptable as we realize the freedoms we have enjoyed all these years were the result of their sacrifices.
That kind of perspective comes only with the passage of time. In real-time it is violent, disturbing and humbling. The personal tragedy that is befalling this man’s family tonight is incredibly sad and my heart goes out to them. This man gave his life defending me, my children and all that I hold dear.
He did not die for a mistake. He did not give his life for a diversion. He was part of a historic, bold mission that is a strategic and central part of the war on terror.
When my kids watch the battle for Fallujah on the History Channel in fifteen or twenty years, they will see clearly how important it was to the future of civilization that we took out Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and fought and won the war against these fanatics.
How do you say thank you?
Here is one small way to express our gratitude. As Americans who benefit from his ultimate sacrifice, we should be raising money for these families with as much energy and enthusiasm as we did for the 9-11 families. It is outrageous but true, the government does not adequately provide for the families of those who pay the ultimate price.